Becoming part of the conspiracy theory: far-right framings of museums and public libraries on Swedish YouTube

Purpose The study has a twofold purpose to gain new insights into how contemporary antagonistic conflicts over culture unfold and the roles of libraries and museums therein and to contribute to a deeper understanding of the transnational dynamics of far-right rhetoric, and how it effects society's democratic infrastructure, of which libraries and museums form part. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a nexus approach that combines data-driven methods with qualitative-mediated narrative analysis. YouTube was selected as the empirical site due to its central role in contemporary information infrastructures. The dataset comprises 1,312 transcribed videos from three Swedish far-right YouTube channels collected via the YouTube API. Eight highly viewed videos focusing on libraries and museums were selected for qualitative analysis, complemented by topic modelling of the full corpus. Findings In the analysed material, museums and libraries are rhetorically used to foster anxieties characteristic of far-right populism: the imagined threat of migrants displacing the native population and undermining welfare provisions, fears of cultural decline, the erosion of national traditions and a presumed inability of the state to serve the people's interest. By exploiting the enablements of YouTube and drawing on conspiratorial narratives of corrupt elites, libraries and museums are rhetorically recast as tools, victims or at times even as agents of indoctrination. Originality/value The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how museums and libraries are appropriated in far-right media ecosystems. It also provides new knowledge on how far-right rhetoric contests and acts against democratic infrastructures by exploiting elite distrust and calling the legitimacy of established institutions into question.